Survey reveals most-used CSS features and tools

State of CSS 2019 report details which CSS features and tools developers use, which they don’t use, and which they prefer

The “State of CSS 2019” report, based on a survey of 11,307 CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) developers in 135 countries, has been released by developers Sacha Greif and Raphael Benitte. The survey identifies which CSS features and tools the developers use and which they prefer.

Nearly 32 percent of respondents had been writing CSS for five to 10 years while 27.07 percent had been writing CSS for 10 to 20 years. CSS, now 22 years old, has evolved over the years to include capabilities such as grids, for specifying complex layouts, and blend modes, masks, and shapes, for implementing richer designs.

Among the CSS layout tools, Flexbox is used by 95.3 percent of CSS developers who know about the feature, while Grid is used by 55.7 percent. Multi-column layout is used by 52.3 percent of the developers who know about it.

Among CSS shapes and graphics, Filters & Effects is used by 67.9 percent of developers who know about the feature, object-fit is used by 67.4 percent, and blend-mode is used by 48.8 percent.

Among CSS interactions, overscroll-behavior is used by 47.7 percent of developers who know about the feature, while overflow-anchor is used by 33.3 percent and Scroll Snap is used by just 22.3 percent.

Among CSS typographical features, @fontface is used by 95.1 percent of developers who know about the feature. Line Breaking Properties is used by 91.3 percent.

As for animations and transforms, Transitions and Transforms are used by better than 95 percent of developers while Animations are used by 91.3 percent.

The CSS calc() capability, for performing calculations, is used by 90.3 percent of developers who know about the feature.

CSS Variables, providing support for custom properties, are used by 62 percent of developers who know about the feature.

Sass is the most popular pre-processor, with 90 percent of developers who have used it reporting they would use it again. Only 25.5 percent of developers who have used Less said they would use it again.

The PostCSS post-processor also got high reviews, with 91 percent of developers who have used it reporting they would use it again.

The most popular text editor proved to be Visual Studio Code, which is regularly used by 70.6 percent of the developers surveyed. Sublime Text is regularly used by 34.1 percent, Atom by 22 percent, WebStorm by 18.5 percent, Vim by 17.5 percent, and Emacs by 1.78 percent.